Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Israel Cancels UNESCO "Fact-Finding" Mission Re Israel's Jewishness (or Lack Thereof) When Abbas "Politicizes" It

Seems to me UNESCO's support of "Palestine" was always "political," but Israel finally figured it out/came to its sense yesterday:
Israel canceled on Monday a planned visit by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to the Old City in Jerusalem after it became clear that the Palestinian Authority was trying to politicize the mission and turn it into an anti-Israeli event. 
The Israeli government last April assented to the UNESCO mission as part of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority that promised to postpone bringing up anti-Israeli resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly. 
Israel announced in April that it would allow a mission from UNESCO to visit the Old City in May, in exchange for an agreement from the Palestinians to postpone a UN debate on five resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. 
UNESCO has been trying to carry out a plan to protect the walls around the Old City, over which the Palestinian Authority demands sovereignty. 
The planned visit by the United Nations agency was seen as a step towards making UNESCO less political following its acceptance of the Palestinian Authority as a member last year, even though the PA is not a member state of the United Nations.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas managed to violate another agreement by trying to turn the UNESCO mission into a “fact-finding” tour of the Jewish presence in the Old City. 
“The Palestinians violated all the agreements we had with UNESCO that this was to be a purely professional, not a political visit,” according to a Foreign Ministry spokesman. 
Sound familiar? Remember Oslo? Bush’s Roadmap? The building freeze in return for “negotiations”?...
Remember UNRWA? The UN's "human rights" body? UN special rapporteur Richard Falk? Israel expecting to get a fair shake from the OIC-dominated UN is like a hen expecting a sane response from the fox who's guarding the chicken coop.

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